Gay rights groups press Senate to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

This report was written by Carolyn Lochhead and Kris Turner of the Washington bureau.

The lame-duck session of Congress starts Monday, but Senate action on the issue is likely to be postponed until Dec. 1, when the Pentagon is scheduled to release its report on how ending the Clinton-era don’t-ask-don’t-tell rule would affect the military.

Many gay rights advocates were shaking their heads this week at the realization that a top gay rights priority now comes down to a high-wire act just before Christmas after two years of Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

A lame-duck repeal effort faces two big hurdles: It must compete for time with other hot issues, including whether to extend all or part of the Bush-era tax cuts, plus leftover spending bills for the government’s fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Another factor: Moderate Senate Democrats may be running scared after last week’s rout by the GOP in the mid-term congressional elections. If repeal passes the Senate, it must be reconciled with the House repeal that passed last May.

Some gay advocates held out hope that repeal can survive as an amendment to a must-pass defense authorization bill that contains military pay increases and veterans benefits. They acknowledged that if it collapses, the issue is dead for the foreseeable future because the new Congress takes office in January.President Obama’s go-slow approach to ending the ban on openly gay men and women from serving in the military has left repeal hanging on life support in a lame-duck session of Congress, as lobbyists raced Tuesday to build support before an incoming tide of newly elected Republicans kills the issue for the rest of Obama’s first term.
“We are in a solid position to repeal” the ban, said Winnie Stachelberg, a long-time gay rights lobbyist now at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal group closely allied with Democrats. However, she described prospects as bleak next year, when Republicans assume control of the House and increase their numbers in the Senate.

“Clearly a change in the leadership of the House presents very large problems,” she said.

The House passed a repeal of the gay ban last May, but Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blocked Senate action in September. McCain had supported repeal in the past but faced a conservative political challenge in his successful re-election bid. He now is in discussions with Senate Armed Services chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., demanding that the repeal be stripped from the defense bill.

Despite campaigning on the issue when he ran for president in 2008, Obama faced stiff resistance from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Pentagon military chiefs once he took office. The White House also was acutely sensitive to the turmoil that the issue created during Clinton’s first year in the White House, in 1993, when the current ban was enacted. Obama repeatedly promised gay advocates that he would push for repeal, but it took a back seat to fiscal stimulus, the health care overhaul and other legislation.

Under the don’t-ask-don’t-tell law, about 14,000 gay men and women have been discharged from the military from 1993 to 2009.

John Aravosis, editor of the liberal Americablog.com, said it is “just bizarre” that it took the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group, to secure a court injunction against the military ban during a period of unilateral Democratic control in Washington. The Obama administration now is battling the injunction in court.

Aravosis said that when McCain blocked Senate repeal in September, “Obama did not call a single senator,” but he did place a call to congratulate victorious Seattle Storm women’s basketball team. “He wasn’t so busy that he couldn’t make calls for basketball stars,” Aravosis said.

“Look at the reality of what we’ve been promised and what we’ve gotten,” said Heather Cronk, managing director of Get Equal, a gay rights advocacy group that turned out to heckle Obama at campaign stops over the fall.

Obama deferred to Gates on the Pentagon study, timed to postpone the issue until after the midterm elections. Gates has said he supports repeal, and White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer issued a statement late Monday saying the administration opposes any effort to strip the repeal from the pending defense bill.

The Pentagon study should have been started earlier, said Jarrod Chlapowski, field and development director for Servicemembers United, an advocacy group. “Everything is down to the wire and a lot of members of Congress are using the study as a cover.”

The Service Members Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for repeal, is targeting 10 Senators for lobbying, including several retiring Republicans and defeated moderate Democrats who may feel free to vote their convictions.

“I’m dealing with the reality of where we are,” said the group’s executive director, Aubrey Sarvis, saying now is not the time to point fingers at who did what wrong.

“Probably most would say the odds are against us pulling it off. It’s going to be very difficult, but I think it can be pulled off, and as long as we have even the slimmest possibility, all energy, all focus should be on this lame duck. There will be plenty of time to go back next year if that’s where we are and do a post mortem.”